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1 DRAFT, Not for Citation Without the Authors Permission A revised version of this paper will appear in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk, The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London: Routledge, forthcoming). Understanding the Coordination Problem in Postwar Statebuilding Roland Paris, University of Ottawa A common critique of postwar statebuilding operations is that they suffer from a lack of coordination among the myriad international actors involved in these missions. Stories abound of international agencies duplicating efforts or even working at cross-purposes, sometimes with limited knowledge of each other s activities, and calls for improved coordination have become something of a mantra among scholars and practitioners of statebuilding (including this author). 1 But these oft-repeated calls may conceal as much as they reveal about the dilemmas of statebuilding. Like other mantras, this one offers soothing simplicity in the face of disturbing complexity. Lurking behind the organizational discontinuities of statebuilding are deeper disagreements and uncertainties about the means and ends of this enterprise, many of which are described in the other chapters of this volume. Getting statebuilding agencies to work smoothly together is, of course, a necessary condition for successful international action (however the goals of that action may be defined), but it is too easy to prescribe improved coordination as a remedy for the shortcomings and contradictions of statebuilding, which run much deeper. 1 For example, Olson and Gregorian 2007; Paris 2004; Smith 2004; Ricigliano 2003; Weinberger 2002; Sommers 2000; and Crocker, Hampson and Aall

2 Understanding the nature of the coordination problem what it reveals, and what it hides is a first step in this analysis. The second step is to explore the challenges of actually improving coordination among international statebuilders. Calls for greater coordination rarely delve into the details: Who will do the coordinating? How, when, and under what auspices? Just starting to answer these questions reveals the complexities of coordination. While there are compelling reasons to strengthen cooperation among the main international actors involved in statebuilding, there are also many pitfalls to avoid. Rather than conceiving of more coordination as an absolute good, this chapter argues that effective coordination requires striking a balance between competing imperatives, which are shaped by the characteristics of the environment and the actors to be coordinated. Indeed, in the environment of statebuilding, there is a real risk that too little, too much, or the wrong type of coordination could do more harm than good. In making this argument, I draw upon organizational theory in particular, the distinction between markets, hierarchies and networks. 2 Put differently, although the coordination problem is real, greater clarity is needed in both its diagnosis and treatment. Too often, unrelated problems are misdiagnosed as coordination failures because they manifest themselves, superficially, as disorderliness or ineffectiveness in the field, whereas in fact they reflect deeper frustrations, tensions and uncertainties in the statebuilding enterprise. And too often, greater coordination is put forward as a remedy without considering the difficulties and risks of the treatment. Thinking carefully about the coordination problem is timely, given initiatives now underway within the United Nations, including the establishment of a new Peacebuilding Commission that is designed to bring greater coherence to the myriad activities of statebuilding agencies, both inside and outside the UN. In its short existence, the Commission has launched an ambitious and innovative work plan, and hopes are high that it will fill what former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a gaping hole in the institutional machinery for statebuilding: namely, the absence of a body to coordinate the alphabet soup of international 2 For other studies applying organizational theory to the problem of coordination in peace operations, see also Lipson 2007 and Herrhausen

3 actors involved in statebuilding missions. As we shall see, however, the design of the Commission makes heroic assumptions about the ability and willingness of independent agencies (whose goals often differ and conflict with each other) to embrace common, overarching strategies. While the Commission s design is well-suited to maintaining the flexibility and creativity of the international statebuilding network and in this sense is sensitive to the distinctive characteristics and needs of this complex and networked policy domain the Commission may be hobbled by its own lack of authority and leverage over key statebuilding agencies. It is a purely advisory body that has no independent decisionmaking authority, and even its recommendations depend on reaching full consensus among its members all of which suggests that the Commission will have great difficulty reducing inter-organizational differences of approach and strategy. Rising Demand for Better Coordination As the Cold War came to an end, a new brand of international peace operations emerged as the dominant security activity of the United Nations: missions aimed at helping war-torn countries make the transition from a fragile ceasefire to a stable peace, or what became known as postconflict peacebuilding. Although this form of intervention was not unprecedented the UN had stumbled into playing a similar role in the Congo during the early 1960s, when a mission designed to oversee the departure of Belgian colonial troops from the newly independent Congo got caught up in a civil war post-conflict stabilization was a new area of focus for the world body in the period immediately following the Cold War. Between 1989 and 1993, eight peacebuilding operations were deployed to countries just emerging from civil conflicts: Namibia, Nicaragua, Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Liberia and Rwanda. These missions were quite unlike the traditional peacekeeping operations that had been the UN s main security function during the Cold War, and which typically involved monitoring ceasefires or neutral buffer zones between former combatants. Rather, peacebuilding now involved the implementation of multi-faceted peace agreements, which often included political and economic elements, in addition to a ceasefire. As then-secretary-general Boutros Boutros- Ghali put it in 1992, the goal of peacebuilding was to identify and support structures which will 3

4 tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict. 3 This typically included monitoring or even administering post-conflict elections as well as other activities such as the demobilization of former fighters, resettlement of refugees, human rights investigations and economic reform. Furthermore, the UN shared these responsibilities with several other international actors, including major regional organizations, international financial institutions, national and international development agencies, and a host of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). With more agencies involved in performing a wider range of tasks than in earlier peace operations, coordination problems soon began to arise. In El Salvador, Mozambique and Cambodia, for example, the UN urged the governments of these countries to increase spending on peacebuilding-related programs, such as the re-integration of former combatants into civilian life, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pushed in the opposite direction and demanded fiscal restraint. 4 Coordination problems also emerged between military and civilian actors, within the family of UN agencies, and between governmental and non-governmental actors, in most missions; and by 1995 the United Nations was recognizing such problems as serious. 5 The success of UN-led peace operations, wrote Boutros-Ghali in that year, depends on cooperation and support of other players on the international stage: the Governments that constitute the United Nations membership, regional and non-governmental organizations, and the various funds, programs, offices and agencies of the United Nations system itself. If United Nations efforts are to succeed, the roles of the various players need to be carefully coordinated in an integrated approach to human security. 6 3 Boutros-Ghali 1992, p On El Salvador see de Soto and del Castillo 1994; on Mozambique see Willet 1995; on Cambodia see UNRISD For a review of major peacebuilding coordination problems during the 1990s, see Jones Boutros-Ghali 1995, para

5 These concerns led to sporadic efforts to improve coordination through devices such as ad hoc Friends groups, which brought together key governments to promote common approaches to specific missions, as well as country team thematic groups within the UN, and Special Representatives of the Secretary-General in the field. But the coordination problem actually became more difficult as time went on for two reasons. First, peacebuilding missions became more complex in their functions and expansive in their aims, due in part to a recognition that a more comprehensive approach to peacebuilding was required in order to address the underlying sources of conflict in societies emerging from civil war. In the early years of the 1990s, peacebuilders tended to rush ahead with post-conflict elections, declare success and depart. This quick and dirty approach failed in Angola (where elections were a catalyst for renewed violence), Rwanda (where overly optimistic assumptions about the willingness of the parties to implement their peace settlement were shattered by genocide), and in Cambodia and Liberia (where elections yielded superficial democratization and a quick return to authoritarianism and, in the case of Liberia, resurgent war). Learning from the shortcomings of these missions, the UN and other international agencies began to shift their focus towards more far-reaching approaches to peacebuilding. This strategic reorientation was especially visible in the Bosnia operation, created in 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Accord. The post-dayton mission was originally scheduled to last only one year (until the end of 1996) and in this sense reflected the prevailing quick and dirty approach that defined peacebuilding in the first half of the 1990s. But the need for a longer-term deployment in Bosnia quickly became apparent and the termination date was eliminated in order to give time for institution-building and economic reform to progress. By the late 1990s, new missions were being launched with broader mandates and authority: Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone. These operations had more expansive functions, and as a result peacebuilding became an even more complex and multi-faceted enterprise. This, in turn, increased the challenges (and importance) of achieving effective coordination. The second complicating factor was the growing number and variety of international actors involved in peacebuilding. The 1990s saw a steady rise in regional and sub-regional organizations as well as NGOs and private military companies as important players in these 5

6 missions. 7 Bosnia, in this respect, too, was a watershed. The post-dayton mission was the first operation explicitly dividing core peacebuilding roles among multiple international actors, including the UN, NATO, EU and OSCE. More generally, through the course of the 1990s, there was a movement away from UN-led missions and the greater reliance on lead states, ad hoc coalitions, and regional bodies to lead military and civilian functions, which contributed the multiplication of peacebuilding actors. Simultaneously, a growing number of international agencies and national governments were creating specialized post-conflict and emergency response units, thus diffusing intervention capacity to a broader range of actors. 8 By the early 2000s, there was a growing sense that an immense coordination problem existed within the international machinery for peacebuilding. 9 Efforts to implement integrated mission models in the field, beginning in Kosovo in 1999, were only partly successful. 10 Attempts to construct an institutional locus for peacebuilding within the UN itself also floundered, 11 and NGOs were coming under increasing criticism for their inability to coordinate amongst themselves. 12 What is more, the very proliferation of ad hoc coordination mechanisms appeared to be creating some confusion among peacebuilders in the field. 13 In fact, problems of coordination existed at four inter-related levels: first, at the field level, between the various international actors (including governmental and non-governmental agencies) involved in statebuilding missions and domestic actors within the country itself, including government authorities; second, within the bureaucracies of the major donor 7 Jones 2003; Bellamy and Williams Jones Fearon and Laitin 2004, p Cutillo Call Cooley and Ron 2002; Patey and Macnamara Duggan 2004, p

7 governments, whose different departments and agencies often pursued different goals and activities within the same mission; third, within the UN system, where bureaucratic rivalries and turf-battles are legion; and fourth, at the headquarters-level between all the major international statebuilding actors as well as the major governments supporting these actors. 14 In substantive terms, coordination involved bringing greater coherence to political, security, rule of law, human rights and development activities of statebuilders at all four of these levels. Perfect or even near-perfect coordination of these many statebuilding activities would be impossible. Indeed, I shall argue below that it would be undesirable. But major operational problems arising from a lack of coordination among statebuilding agencies has been welldocumented, giving rise to a growing body of reports and studies that have reached the same conclusion: that the hard nut of coordination needs to be cracked. One 2004 study examined 336 peacebuilding projects sponsored by Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the U.K. and concluded that more than 55 percent of these projects had no link to any broader strategy for the country in which they were implemented, pointing to a strategic deficit in the design and conduct of peacebuilding missions. 15 Another report found that diffuse planning and implementation of peacebuilding is extremely problematic and produces a greater chance of delay or failure. 16 In 2004, Cedric de Coning summarized what had emerged as a widely-held view among peacebuilding analysts and practitioners: the lack of meaningful coordination among the peacebuilding agencies [is] a major cause of unsatisfactory performance. 17 It was in this context in early 2005 that Kofi Annan described the insufficiency of coordination as a gaping hole in the UN s institutional machinery for peacebuilding. When Annan made these remarks, there was growing support among UN member states to address the coordination issue. Several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and 14 On the multiple levels of coordination in peacebuilding, see de Coning Smith 2004; see also Clingendael Dahrendorf et al. 2003, p De Coning 2004, p

8 the United States were already pursuing plans to develop more effective whole-of-government approaches to fragile states within their respective governments. 18 The High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change had also recently issued its report calling for the creation of a new body the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) to monitor and pay close attention to countries at risk, ensure concerted action by donors, agencies, programs and financial institutions, and mobilize financial resources for sustainable peace. 19 Annan himself strongly supported the proposal for the PBC, as did many UN member states. This was, in fact, one of the few agenda items that achieved widespread support at the 2005 World Summit. 20 The Peacebuilding Commission along with its Support Office and a dedicated Peacebuilding Fund came into existence in As we shall see, their creation represented one of the most promising opportunities in recent years to improve coordination among statebuilding agencies within and outside the UN system. However, the degree to which a new body could fix the coordination problem would depend not only on how that body was designed, but also on the definition of the problem itself. The Coordination Problem: A Convenient Catch-All? There are compelling efficiency arguments for addressing the coordination problem among international statebuilders and for creating new mechanisms to foster more cooperation and 18 Patrick and Brown High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change 2004, para Other initiatives approved at the 2005 World Summit included an endorsement of the Responsibility to Protect principles; a condemnation of terrorism in all its forms; an agreement to establish a new Human Rights Council; and increased funding to humanitarian assistance. The summit, however, was widely viewed as a disappointment because of expectations for greater progress on poverty reduction policy and institutional reform of the UN itself most notably, the Security Council for which there was little agreement. 8

9 coherence in the field. But there is also something peculiar about the number of operational problems that have been attributed to coordination failures, and the degree to which improved coordination is sometimes portrayed as a means of resolving these problems. In the light of deep uncertainties and disagreements that render postwar statebuilding such a complex (and sometimes controversial) exercise, the emphasis on improving coordination seems strangely anodyne and technocratic. If we have learned anything in the past decade and a half and by we I am referring primarily to the Western governments, organizations and specialists who support the international statebuilding machinery it is that we know relatively little about how to transform war-torn countries into stable societies. The results of the missions undertaken to date have been mixed at best. 21 In some cases, such as Angola, Rwanda, Liberia and East Timor, international efforts did not prevent a resumption of violence, with new conflicts erupting in these countries. In other cases, such as El Salvador and Nicaragua, peace prevails but the underlying socioeconomic conditions that drove conflict remain largely unchanged. Elsewhere, including Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, international deployments have arguably resulted in a seemingly permanent, quasi-imperial presence, which raises concerns about fostering excessive local dependence on international actors. All of these missions reveal the tremendous complexity and difficulty involved in building stable state institutions in war-torn states, particularly when this process is led by outsiders problems that are further complicated when statebuilding takes place after external conquest, as in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the face of ongoing insurgencies. Major questions of strategy and legitimacy remain unanswered: What is the best combination of political and economic reforms in a postconflict situation, and in what sequence? How can international actors play a statebuilding role without undermining the perceived legitimacy of the resulting institutions in the eyes of the local populace? Most fundamentally, how can a statebuilding process that took hundreds of years in most well-established liberal democracies be accelerated and achieved within a dramatically shorter time? 21 Paris 2004; Doyle and Sambanis

10 Indeed, lack of coordination in previous missions has resulted not only from obvious factors, such as the multitude of peacebuilding actors with overlapping or duplicative mandates, the time and money ( transaction costs ) that coordination entails, competition for influence and visibility among some international peacebuilding agencies and their general unwillingness to sacrifice autonomy and independence. 22 More fundamentally, such problems also stem from the fact that many of these agencies have different approaches to postwar statebuilding and different philosophies, objectives and conceptions of how to create the conditions for stable and lasting peace in war-torn societies. 23 Such differences have been well-documented in many operations. In the case of Bosnia, for example, Bruce Jones, Elizabeth Cousens and Susan Woodward each observed that lack of success in coordination stemmed from differing, even contradictory, policy goals of the international agencies and major powers involved in Bosnia. 24 While most international actors subscribe to the broad goals of transforming war-torn states into liberal market democracies, there is no universal agreement on what is required to achieve this goal, or how to achieve it under different circumstances. 25 Significant differences in approach also exist within in individual agencies including in the OSCE, where the democratization branch generally seeks to develop working relationships with local authorities, while the human rights branch is tasked with responding to complaints against local authorities. 26 Discrepancies in strategic orientation can also give rise to concerns and disputes over the politicization of humanitarian relief in statebuilding missions. 27 Discussions aimed at improving coordination have tended to overlook these substantive disagreements and to redefine them in procedural-technocratic terms: namely, as coordination 22 Uvin Miall 2007, p Jones 2001; Cousens 2001; and Woodward Paris Jeong 2002, p Dononi 1996, p. vi. 10

11 problems. Undoubtedly, there have been genuine coordination problems, where actors share common objectives but fail to cooperate or work at cross-purposes because of insufficient information sharing. But there are also underlying substantive-philosophical differences which lead statebuilding agencies to pursue conflicting or incompatible strategies, and it follows that any response to such problems cannot be a purely procedural one. Bureaucracies, in particular, have a propensity to deal with situations of complexity, novelty and uncertainty by shifting these discussions into more familiar terrain: the realm of rules and procedures. This is true not just of bureaucracies, but of people in general. Social psychologists have shown that when people are faced with situations of uncertainty, they tend to fall back on habits and routines as a means of economizing on cognitive resources and coping with complexity. 28 But bureaucracies, which specialize in disaggregating administrative problems into manageable and repetitive tasks, have a particular tendency to revert to a procedural discourse in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. 29 This is one aspect of what Max Weber first called the process of rationalization which is intrinsic to modern bureaucracies 30 and it may help to explain how it was possible to achieve such widespread support for the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission at the 2005 World Summit, where other important agenda items were subject to paralyzing discord. Recasting the strategic disagreements over statebuilding as procedural problems apparently made it possible to reach near-universal agreement on specific measures to strengthen statebuilding through organizational reform. 31 During the discussions that led up to the establishment of the PBC, even traditionally wary countries such as China chimed in with strong support for its creation: China is favorably disposed toward the proposal for the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission and believes 28 Becker 2004, pp Beetham 1996, p. 12; March and Olsen 1989, p Weber On the tendency of organizations including the United Nations to respond to external pressures by promising reform, but not dealing directly with substantive issues, see Lipson 2007b. 11

12 that its main responsibility should be to help devise plans for the transition from conflict to postconflict peacebuilding and to coordinate initiatives of the international community in this respect. 32 But the Chinese delegation pointedly avoided making any references to the more controversial substance of peacebuilding strategy, referring instead to such generalities devising plans and coordinating initiatives. Even members of the customarily critical NGO community joined the chorus, supporting the establishment of the Commission, again in largely procedural terms, as an institutional home for peacebuilding that could provide much-needed policy coherence and coordination within the UN system. 33 However, there were potential costs to using the coordination problem as a catch-all for deeper disagreements and uncertainties over the strategy and purposes of peacebuilding. First, doing so could raise expectations about the degree to which procedural fixes are capable of reducing the inherent complexity of statebuilding or overcoming organizational conflicts rooted in the incompatible priorities and strategic orientations of statebuilding agencies, not just in their failure to communicate and coordinate. Second, defining the problem in this manner could actually deflect attention away from these deeper issues. Indeed, UN members spent a year wrangling over purely procedural aspects of the new PBC its membership, structure, and so on before the body was able to hold its first meeting. Perhaps such discussions were necessary, but they came with an opportunity cost: this time was not spent addressing substantive statebuilding strategies. 32 Statement by Ambassador Zhang Yishan on Cluster II (Freedom from Fear) of the Secretary- General s Report, In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All" at the Informal Thematic Consultations of General Assembly, New York, April 22, 2005, (accessed on October 5, 2006). 33 Statement by the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security at the Informal General Assembly Civil Society Hearings, New York, June 24,

13 Interestingly, one of the few official statements that challenged the prevailing procedural discourse in this early period of the Commission s formation came not from a national delegation, but from the head of the UN bureaucracy itself: then-secretary-general Kofi Annan. At the June 2006 launch of the Commission, Annan drew attention to the inherently political task of postwar reconstruction: [I]ncreased resources and improved coordination will not, in themselves, be enough to bring about lasting peace At times, the international community has approached peacebuilding as a largely technical exercise, involving knowledge and resources. The international community must not only understand local power dynamics, but also recognize that it is itself a political actor entering a political environment. 34 These comments gently peeled back the procedural veneer of discussions on the Peacebuilding Commission, exposing the highly political and contentious core of the statebuilding enterprise that had been partially obscured by the emphasis on coordination. The Need for a Balanced Approach to Coordination Just as it is naive to blame coordination failures for a host of more complex problems, it is too easy to call for stronger coordination without understanding that not all types of coordination are well-suited to the circumstances and needs of statebuilding. Too much, too little, or the wrong type of coordination could do more harm than good. The challenge is to avoid these pitfalls and to devise coordination methods that are properly calibrated to the particular tasks and task-environments in question. The starting point for this analysis is to recognize that the international statebuilding machinery is, at present, a loosely structured network of national governments and international governmental and non-governmental agencies. It is a network in the sense that statebuilding 34 Opening First Session of Peacebuilding Commission, Secretary-General Stresses Importance of National Ownership, Building Effective Public Institutions, UN document SG/SM/10533, PBC/2, June 23, 2006, (accessed on October 5, 2006). 13

14 actors constitute a system that is neither purely a market in which individual actors pursue their individual goals with little sense of sharing common objectives, nor is it purely a hierarchy or a system of top-down or command management. Networks are collections of actors who share common goals and engage in repeated, voluntary interactions in the pursuit of their shared goals. In the words of Walter W. Powell, transactions between networked actors occur neither through discrete exchanges [as in the market] nor by administrative fiat [as in a hierarchy], but through networks of individuals engaged in reciprocal, preferential, mutually supportive actions. 35 The international statebuilding system is a network because its constituent members share information with each other, discuss common objectives, work together to achieve these objectives both at the headquarters-level and in the field, and use several formal and informal coordination mechanisms (outlined in the first section of this chapter). But it is a loosely structured network in that there is little joint planning for missions, patchy information sharing, inconsistent and often non-existent coordination, and no hierarchical command structure for the system as a whole. When commentators or officials talk about the need for improved coordination, they may mean different things. For some, improved coordination means moving towards a more hierarchical arrangement. Anja T. Kaspersen and Ole Jacob Sending, for example, have argued for functional centralization and a fully integrated structure for peacebuilding within the United Nations, in order to reduce supply-driven programming and turf battles and to make it possible to implement a peacebuilding strategy that would draw effectively on the full spectrum of the tools and expertise of the UN system. 36 For others, such as Robert Ricigliano, improved coordination refers to international actors doing a better job of sharing information and 35 Powell 1990, p Kaspersen and Sending 2005, p

15 subscribing to a broad set of common principles. 37 These are quite different visions of how to achieve better coordination. The former involves replacing the existing statebuilding network (at least the UN portion of this network) with a new hierarchy centered in the UN, whereas the latter eschews new hierarchies and seeks to make the network work more efficiently as a network through improved information sharing. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Those who argue that the international statebuilding system should continue to operate as network, without the addition of new hierarchical elements, assume that better communication alone will yield a more coordinated self-organizing network of statebuilding actors. Greater communication is surely needed (not least to prevent the unintentional duplication of efforts) but can information sharing, alone, address strategic gaps and differences in approach to statebuilding? I doubt it. In fact, this is one of the principal scholarly criticisms of the various theories of network organization: they have neglected the role of power as an instigator of cooperation and have placed too high an expectation on consensus. 38 Achieving cooperation and coordination through networks cannot be taken for granted, even in networks whose members share a high level of trust and common goals. 39 Sometimes it is necessary to institute elements of top-down direction, such as a lead organization (or small group of lead organizations) to devise network-wide strategies and monitor the performance of network members. 40 Indeed, previous efforts to devise integrated missions within the UN were obstructed when Agencies, Funds and Programs welcomed a greater say in the planning of UN peacekeeping operations but balked at the prospect of taking direction from them Ricigliano 2003, p For similar arguments, see also de Coning 2004 and Roberts and Bradley Klijn and Koppenjan Tenbensel 2005, p Alexander 1995, pp Ahmed, Keating and Solinas 2007, p

16 On the other hand, moving toward centralization and hierarchy can also be problematic, for several reasons. First, as students of networks and network theory have pointed out, centralization has the potential reduce policy innovation and experimentation by constraining the freedom of individual agencies and actors. The benefits of experimentation through decentralized organizational structures have long been recognized. Within the context of the American federal structure, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in 1932 that U.S. states serve as policy laboratories to try novel social and economic experiments that, if successful, could be replicated by others. 42 In a similar vein, when President Lyndon Johnson initiated his War on Poverty and a planning exercise to identify the most effective and least costly alternatives in achieving social welfare goals, social scientists led by Donald T. Campbell called for an experimental approach to policy reform, or an approach in which we try out new programs designed to cure specific social problems, in which we learn whether or not these programs are effective, and in which we retain, imitate, modify or discard them on the basis of apparent effectiveness. 43 In the circumstances of postwar statebuilding, the problems to be addressed are complex, there is no single obvious solution, and the stakes are very high in short, there is a strong case for continued experimentation with alternative strategies. Put slightly differently, centralized coordination has the potential to reduce the flexibility of constituent organizations in responding to shifting circumstances, which can be a serious disadvantage in rapidly changing and uncertain environments. The rigid character of standardized procedures inherent in formal centralized structures, writes Donald Chisholm, precludes adaptive responses to surprise, and the organizational system suffers accordingly. 44 Flexibility is most important in domains where surprises are likely and quick adaptation essential. Postwar statebuilding is an exceptionally unpredictable and uncertain enterprise, for three reasons: first, because these missions take place in volatile environments where there is a 42 New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 US 262, 311 (1932). 43 Campbell 1969, p Chisholm 1989, p

17 relatively high likelihood of violence, relative to conditions in other developing states; second, because these missions are multi-faceted and actions taken in one area political, social or economic have the potential to generate unforeseen results in other areas; and third, because international peacebuilding agencies have only limited knowledge of what is required to succeed in the ambitious task of stabilizing a fragile country after war. The ability of these agencies to adapt and react quickly to changing circumstances and surprises including revising specific strategies that are producing unforeseen and undesirable effects is a key to preventing small problems from swelling into crises that threaten the peace and the success of the mission. For this reasons, rigid or overly bureaucratic forms of international coordination could reduce the overall effectiveness of statebuilding. In addition, delegating strategic planning upwards to an international mechanism has the potential to result in de-contextualized cookie cutter approaches to statebuilding that do not adequately respond to the unique needs of individual societies emerging from war. Indeed, one of the most common recommendations in studies of peacebuilding and criticisms of previous missions is that strategies need to be carefully customized to local conditions, based on a deep analysis of the drivers of conflict within the society. A related criticism is that statebuilding missions have not been adequately accountable to the local populations they are affecting. 45 The more that peacebuilding strategies and mission plans are developed within an international coordination structure, the less latitude individual agencies may have to define their own policies and, to the extent that individual agencies have already established accountability mechanisms of their own, these mechanisms may no longer be either adequate or relevant, because more of the key decisions on peacebuilding policy will be made by the collectivity of major peacebuilding actors involved in the mission, not by the individual agency. The formalization and centralization of any diffuse organizational system therefore runs the risk of reducing whatever public accountability previously existed within that system. 46 Reduced accountability is not inevitable indeed, centralization involves the creation of a new locus of authority, which can itself be designed to operate according to norms and procedures of accountability. But the 45 Chandler 2005; Caplan 2005; Beauvais 2001; Chopra Chisholm 1989, p

18 rationale for decentralization or delegation of authority normally includes the expectation that policies designed and implemented closer to the people affected by the policies will tend to be more responsive to these people s distinctive needs. This rationale is at the heart of decentralization arguments espoused by the new public management movement, which focuses on improving the responsiveness of governments to their clients or citizens. 47 It is also central to the concept of subsidiarity (most often in connection to the European Union s multilevel governance structure) 48 and in strategies of aid donors seeking to promote democratic decentralization in recipient developing countries. 49 These observations suggest two broad conclusions. First, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted when faced with boilerplate calls for more coordination. In each case it is worth asking: What specific type of coordination is advocated? How this approach will achieve tangible results? And how do so without stumbling into the pitfalls described above? Second, the challenge in statebuilding is not simply to strengthen coordination, as many observers suggest; rather, it is to develop coordination methods that are calibrated to the distinctive characteristics and requirements of statebuilding. On one hand, there are clear benefits to retaining the largely decentralized structure of the international statebuilding system. On the other hand, the statebuilding network as it is currently constituted has been incapable of effective self-organizing and is unlikely to do so merely by increasing the sharing of information or consultation among statebuilding actors. Some additional elements of hierarchy or central direction seem necessary to increase the problems of incoherence and inter-organizational conflict over goals, strategies and turf that have undermined previous missions. Adding new elements of top-down direction does not mean transforming the statebuilding network into a hierarchy, but rather, adding elements of hierarchy in order to address and at least partially resolving substantive disagreements over objectives and strategies without unduly squelching the flexibility and fluidity which remains a key strength of the decentralized statebuilding network. 47 Vigoda Føllesdal 1998; Cooper DFID

19 A balanced approach to improving coordination in statebuilding would thus entail retaining the predominantly network form of the existing system while (1) greatly increasing informationsharing and consultation, and (2) modestly strengthening the hierarchical features of the network. As we shall see below, one of the goals of the new Peacebuilding Commission is to encourage international statebuilding agencies and national authorities to work together in planning new operations and devising integrated strategies for countries emerging from, or at risk of slipping into, violent conflict. Joint strategic planning is an excellent idea: it would bring different perspectives and priorities into the open, creating an opportunity to resolve these differences before they disrupt the flow and effectiveness of operations. But whether the Commission has been endowed with sufficient top-down authority or hierarchy to accomplish this goal namely, to resolve key differences, to promote joint planning and (most importantly) to induce turf-conscious statebuilding agencies to work towards shared strategies remains to be seen. 19

20 The Peacebuilding Commission: A Preliminary Assessment At the time of this writing, any evaluation of the PBC must be preliminary, given that the body has existed for less than two years. However, it is possible to analyze the approach taken in the creation of the Commission, the direction in which the Commission has developed during its first eighteen months of operation, and the degree to which this new body elucidates and embodies the above-mentioned tensions and problems that accompany the coordination problem for statebuilding. Following the September 2005 decision of the World Summit to endorse the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission, the UN General Assembly and the Security Council passed parallel resolutions in December setting out the elements of the Commission and the Peacebuilding Support Office. 50 According to these resolutions, the three main purposes of the Commission were: 1. To bring together all relevant actors to marshal resources and to advise on and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery; 2. To focus attention on the reconstruction and institution-building efforts necessary for recovery from conflict and to support the development of integrated strategies in order to lay the foundation for sustainable development; and 3. To provide recommendations and information to improve the coordination of all relevant actors within and outside the United Nations, to develop best practices, to help to ensure predictable financing for early recovery activities and to extend the period of attention given by the international community to post-conflict recovery. 50 Security Council resolution 1645 (20 December 2005); General Assembly resolution 60/180 (30 December 2005). 20

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